Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, Vol. I.

by John L. Stephens

The engraving opposite represents the plan of the buildings of this city. It is not made from actual measurements, for this would have required clearings which, from the difficulty of procuring Indians, it would have been impossible to make; but the bearings were taken with the compass from the top of the great teocalis, and the distances are laid down according to our best judgment with the eye.

On this plan the reader will see a road marked "Camino Real to Bolonchen," and on the left a path marked "Path to Milpa." Following this path toward the field of ruins, the teocalis is the first object that meets his eye, grand, picturesque, ruined, and covered with trees, like the House of the Dwarf at Uxmal, towering above every other object on the plain. It is about one hundred and eighty feet square at the base, and rises in a pyramidal form to the height of eighty feet. At the foot is a range of ruined apartments. The steps are all fallen, and the sides present a surface of loose stones, difficult to climb, except on one side, where the ascent is rendered practicable by the aid of trees. The top presents a grand view. I ascended it for the first time toward evening, when the sun was about setting, and the ruined buildings were casting lengthened shadows over the plain. At the north, south, and east the view was bounded by a range of hills. In part of the field of ruins was a clearing, in which stood a deserted rancho, and the only indication that we were in the vicinity of man was the distant church in the village of Nohcacab.

Leaving this mound, again taking the milpa path, and following it to the distance of three or four hundred yards, we reach the foot of a terrace twenty feet high, the edge of which is overgrown with trees; ascending this, we stand on a platform two hundred feet in width by one hundred and forty-two feet deep, and facing us is the building represented in the plate opposite. On the right of the platform, as we approach this building, is a high range of structures, ruined and overgrown with trees, with an immense back wall built on the outer line of the platform, perpendicular to the bottom of the terrace. On the left is another range of ruined buildings, not so grand as those on the right, and in the centre of the platform is a stone enclosure twenty-seven feet square and seven feet high, like that surrounding the picote at Uxmal; but the layer of stones around the base was sculptured, and, on examination, we found a continuous line of hieroglyphics. Mr. Catherwood made drawings of these as they lay scattered about, but, as I cannot present them in the order in which they stood, they are omitted altogether.

In the centre of the platform is a range of stone steps forty feet wide and twenty in number, leading to an upper terrace, on which stands the building. This building is one hundred and fifty-one feet front, and the moment we saw it we were struck with the extraordinary richness and ornament of its façade. In all the buildings of Uxmal, without a single exception, up to the cornice which runs over the doorway the façades are of plain stone; but this was ornamented from the very foundation, two layers under the lower cornice, to the top.

The reader will observe that a great part of this façade has fallen; toward the north end, however, a portion of about twenty-five feet remains, which, though not itself entire, shows the gorgeousness of decoration with which this façade was once adorned. The plate opposite represents this part, exactly as it stands, with the cornice over the top fallen.

The ornaments are of the same character with those at Uxmal, alike complicated and incomprehensible, and from the fact that every part of the façade was ornamented with sculpture, even to the portion now buried under the lower cornice, the whole must have presented a greater appearance of richness than any building at Uxmal. The cornice running over the doorways (which is stamped on the cover of this work), tried by the severest rules of art recognised among us, would embellish the architecture of any known era, and, amid a mass of barbarism, of rude and uncouth conceptions, it stands as an offering by American builders worthy of the acceptance of a polished people.

The lintels of the doorways were of wood; these are all fallen, and of all the ornaments which decorated them not one now remains. No doubt they corresponded in beauty of sculpture with the rest of the façade. The whole now lies a mass of rubbish and ruin at the foot of the wall.